Our lives are saturated by media that we use in conscious as well as unconscious ways. Spanning a wide range of examples, from film and TV to social media, from gaming to robots, this critical introduction guides readers through the growing field of psychoanalytic media studies in a clear and accessible manner. It is indispensable read for anyone who wants to understand the complex relationship between humans and technology today.
Jacob Johanssen and Steffen Krüger show how media function beyond the rational. What does it mean to speak of narcissism in relation to social media? How have the internet and online platforms shaped work? How do apps like Tinder and online pornography shape our experience of love and sexuality? What are the potentials and pitfalls in our relationships with AI and robots? These questions, and many others, are discussed and answered in this book.
Aimed at students, academics and clinicians, this book introduces readers to key media and the ways they have been approached psychoanalytically, and presents major concepts and debates led by scholars since the 1970s.
Jacob Johanssen is Senior Lecturer in Communications, St. Mary’s University (London). His research interests include psychoanalysis and digital media, audience research, sexuality and digital media, affect theories, psychosocial studies and critical theory. He is co-editor of the Counterspace section of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and a founder scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC).
Steffen Krüger is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Media and Communication, and Head of the Screen Cultures MA programme and research initiative, both at the University of Oslo. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters in the interdisciplinary field of psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies, media and cultural studies as well as critical theory. He is contributing editor at Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and The Journal of Psychosocial Studies.
Dr Aaron Balick, psychotherapist and author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking –
‘At last, the book we have been waiting for – that comprehensive text that bites off as much as it can chew from our ragingly complex contemporary media and technology landscape, and then subjects what it finds to the psychoanalytic gaze. From AI to Žižek, the authors have tamed a dizzyingly diverse body of theory into a brilliant, comprehensive, and significant text. Johanssen and Krügerhave crushed it.’
Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University –
‘This book is a tour de force. It takes us from early feminist psychoanalytic work on the media through the decades of TV and video games to the utter ubiquitous character of social media in the present of a neoliberalism that invades every corner of life. Its analysis is utterly compelling: at the same time erudite and accessible. I cannot recommend it highly enough to both scholars in the field and to students alike.’
Professor Emeritus Elizabeth Cowie, Film Studies, University of Kent –
‘Media and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Introduction is a major contribution to the field of media studies. It presents a very well-researched and accessible study of human engagement with contemporary media through the lens of psychoanalysis. The authors explore how different media incite and organise our desire for recognition and forms of relating that involve a complex balance between activity and passivity, fantasy play and reality testing. They offer radically new ways to understand the social and political implications – positive and negative – arising from our interactions with these diverse forms.’